Afternoon Coffee: Q1 2018 SolutionMap Out Today, Apple Plans to Use its Own Chips by 2020

In case you missed it, Spend Matters released earlier Tuesday the Q1 2018 SolutionMap. The first quarterly release of the year offers individual vendor rankings and analysis for six technology areas with (spend and procurement analytics, sourcing, supplier management, contract lifecycle management, e-procurement and invoice-to-pay) and three composite suite views (strategic procurement technologies, procure-to-pay and source-to-pay).

Apple Chips

Intel, the supplier of chips for Apple’s Mac products, got some bad news Monday. According to Bloomberg, Apple is planning to use its own chips in Mac computers beginning as early as 2020. The initiative seeks to make all of Apple's devices work more similarly and seamlessly together.

Online Groceries

Buying groceries in person is so 2010. A new report by Forrester estimates online grocery shopping spending will double in the next five years, reaching $334 billion, MediaPost reports. Retailers including Walmart and Amazon are racing to become dominant providers of the service.

U.S. Manufacturing

And finally, an economic update: ISM’s index of manufacturing activity fell to 59.3 in March from 60.8 in February, the Wall Street Journal reports. Companies said new tariffs and rising prices for materials are threatening to slow the industry’s expansion.